PocketPC: Quality of Internet experience??

[acemcmac]

I am a former owner of a Palm IIIx. It gave up the ghost years ago and I have paid little attention to PDA development since.

With that in mind, I just noticed that PDA's are available at even below 200$ (Toshiba E740, PocketPC) with integrated wifi. I am hooked on the idea of internet explorer, email and instant messenger on commandeered open nodes around campus, but I have no idea if the PocketPC interface is even intuitave enough to make the experience worthwhile. Light web browsing (news, anand, toms, inquirer), and productivity stuff will be my only use and multimedia matters to me little. Any thoughts?

 

[dpain]

For light stuff, the expeience is fine. It is just like using IE but smaller. Once you get used to it, it is fine for sports scores, whether, trivia research and the likes. You just get a little tired of scrolling!

 

[acemcmac]

Does landscape view help? Do you know if that's a registry hack, an option or default?

 

[Spyro]

I can't really say much about the Internet experience of a Pocket PC, but I use my Zaurus for web browsing pretty often. (Actually, I'm posting this from it right now.) I don't use landscape mode because of the built-in keyboard on the 5500 though. If you're not bothered by scrolling on a small screen, then you should be fine.

 

[Abzstrak]

its ok, screen is small, but workable. Stay away from that toshiba, I've heard alot of bad things about it... evewryones trying to resell them on ebay too to dunmp them, thats why its cheap. try an ipaq

 

[sp80]

Originally posted by: Abzstrak
its ok, screen is small, but workable. Stay away from that toshiba, I've heard alot of bad things about it... evewryones trying to resell them on ebay too to dunmp them, thats why its cheap. try an ipaq

Not really, the e740 is a great PocketPC, but Toshiba is screwing their customers over by not letting them upgrade their $400+ PDA to Windows Mobile 2003. I almost bought one and did a lot of research on them, but I descided to go with the Dell Axim. I love my Axim .

And to answer the initial question, I like browsing on my PDA, I think its awesome. Not as good as browsing on a laptop though.

 

[stardust]

Fine for me on my HP ipaq. The sites don't load very fast though, and some ads get annoying.

 

[spyordie007]

browsing is okay on my iPaq, IE is a little sluggish at times and I get fairly tired of scrolling though so I generally try and keep it to a minimum.

-Spy

 

[TerryMathews]

Don't get the 740, spend the extra and get the e755. WM2003 built-in, plus PXA255 instead of 250. Faster bus and more overclockable. Mine's 100% stable at 472MHz.

BTW, the Toshiba rocks. It's the only (cheap) unit available with both USB host support, built-in WIFI, and a cheap extended battery. 3000MaH for ~$100, sometimes you can find someone selling them for ~$50.